Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Fruitful Editing

External $100 Sony DVD Burner Likes Macs

- 2007.10.10

Bookmark in del.icio.us

The 18x Sony DRX830U drive reviewed here has been replaced by the 20x DRX840U, which is currently (Dec. 2008) available from Amazon.com for $79.99. It should work every bit as well with the Mac as the older drive.

My previous article was about how to rip your DVDs to your computer. This time around, we'll be looking at the Sony DRX830U DVD burner. Whether you need a burner for data backup of all those MPEG-4 files you just made or to burn custom DVDs, this Sony burner may just be what you're looking for.

Sony DRX830U

These days, just about every computer comes with a DVD writer or a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. My iMac G5 came with a 4x Apple branded SuperDrive, which has worked for the past two years but is really quite picky about media. When I was lucky, it would burn at the full 4x speed, but most of the time, it burned at 2x - or even 1x.

I'd thought about getting a fast external DVD burner, both to get a nice speed boost and also to be able to use it with whatever computer I needed to connect it to.

As Mac users, we're fortunate to have an excellent operating system, great free software, and some pretty long lasting computers. But make a trip down to your local Staples or Office Max, and you're instantly reminded that we live in a Windows world.

Just head over to the internal/external drive aisle and count the Mac compatible items:

Hard drives? Good
External hard drives? Good
Internal DVD writers? Not bad
External DVD burners? Terrible

Or is it?

I spent months trying to decide on an external burner. Each one in the local stores read "Windows only". I looked online, and the Mac compatible burners were always sold at an average of $60 more than the Windows version!

It's just not fair. We Mac users should be treated equally with our different OS brethren. General software, that I can understand. But can't a company write a simple OS X driver for a burner without inflating the price?

Well, I was fed up. I had chosen the Sony DVD DRX830U 18x burner because it was fast and cheap - and the reviewers on Amazon gave it good marks. As I was scrolling through the comments, I started to notice that a lot were from Mac users - and how this particular burner worked fine with Macs.

I set off to the store, determined to take my chances. I'd plug it in, and if it didn't work, oh well. There's always eBay.

The box was clearly labeled with Windows; no Macintosh compatibility was stated whatsoever, not even in the documentation. I unwrapped it all, plugged the cable into the USB 2.0 port on my PowerBook, and turned it on.

No response at first from OS X, but when I opened the drive and put a blank DVD in, it showed up! No strange patches to install, no third party software needed. It worked just the way we Mac users would expect it to. (Note: This was under Tiger. I have yet to try this using Panther.)

I'm a big fan of Toast, and the latest version works great with this external burner. I've experienced write speeds much lower than the box stated, though. So far the top speed (with any media) is 8x for DVDs, which is still pretty decent.

The burner worked great with both my iMac and my PowerBook. So far the device has only given me one or two coasters, which were likely caused by software and not the drive.

I feel like I've added some incredible functionality to my three-year-old iMac, and that's what Low End Mac is all about, right?

Brian Gray is a journalist from North Carolina who enjoys writing, the beach, and tinkering with Macs.

Recent Fruitful Editing Columns

Kodak Zi6 Compact HiDef Video Camera, 08.31. Selling for under $150, Kodak's Zi6 is light, compact, and produces good quality video for a low-end device.
Leaving Linux for a MacBook Pro, 04.03. Running the $550 HP notebook with Linux just didn't satisfy, and a good deal on a first generation MacBook Pro made coming back easy.
Good-bye PowerBook, Hello Linux on a Laptop, 03.02. Why shouldn't a cheap PC notebook with Linux be an adequate replacement for an old PowerBook?
Nikon D40 Provides Lots of Quality at a Nice Price, 10.28. For most photographers most of the time, Nikon's D40 DSLR has all the features and quality necessary and an affordable price.
More in the Fruitful Editing index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: 17" MacBook Pro Core Duo, Apr. 2006 - The top-end MacBook Pro includes a 1680 x 1050, 2.16 GHz Core Duo CPU, and supports Apple 30" Cinema Display.
Group of the Day: G4 List is for those using Power Mac G4s or G4 upgrades.
November 24 in LEM history: 98: Microsoft's heavy hand - 00: Looking at the iMac - 04: The best Mac for the holidays - Picking the right replacement for a dead mouse - Better battery for 15" AlBook
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best G4 iMac Deals, 11.24. Used 15" 700 MHz CD-RW, $150; 800 MHz Combo, $229; 1 GHz, $289; 17" 1.25 GHz, $200; 20" 1.25 GHz, $509.
Best MacBook Air Deals, 11.24. Used from $899; refurb from $1,099; new 1.6 GHz/120 HD, $1,150 after rebate; 1.8/64 SSD, $1,150 a/r; 1.86/128 SSD, $1,350 a/r; 2.13/128 SSD, $1,694 a/r.
Best PowerBook G3 Deals, 11.24. Used 233 MHz WallStreet, $75; 266 MHz, $160; 400 MHz Lombard, $199; 400 MHz Pismo, $289; 500 MHz, $350.
Best 12" PowerBook G4 Deals, 11.23. Used 867 MHz SuperDrive, $348; 1 GHz Combo, $379; SD, $519; 1.33 GHz, $529; 1.5 GHz Combo, $549; SuperDrive, $609.
Best Mac Pro Deals, 11.23. Used 2.66 GHz 4-core, $1,300; 3.0 4-core. $1,919; refurb 2.66 4-core Nehalem, $2,149; 2.93, $2,549; 2.93 8-core, $4,999; new 2.26 8-core, $2,290.
Best Time Capsule and AirPort Deals, 11.23. Used 802.11g AirPort Extreme, $49; 500 GB Time Capsule, $150; new, $190; 1 TB dual-band, $280; 2 TB, $469; 802.11n AirPort Extreme, $170.
Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.